one day we were hanging out, when somehow the topic of the Roma people came up and he referred to them by the derogatory term that starts with a G. I figured he was just ignorant of it, so I told him that it’s really not cool to say that and that he went on a whole rant about how romani were “bums” and that “all they did was steal” and that “you would agree with me if i met one.” He gave a few anecdotes about how he saw a romani person in line at a grocery store and said they stank, giving this as justification that they are all “bums.” When I kept calling him out on saying the G slur he told me to grow a pair, because “people are gonna say stuff you don’t like.” I was really confused and shocked as he had shown me nothing of this and I was pretty sad. I feel so angry that this kind of discrimination is so god damned common among americans. I cant wait to get out of this hellhole

  • Comradesexual
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    4 months ago

    I got tons of shit for the country I was born in. I don’t even have much if anything to do with it culturally and I’m only partially it ethnically. Euros love to be xenophobic. Germans are really fucked up when it comes to xenophobia. They’re so open and smug about it. :/

    I am so sorry you experienced that POS. I’m manifesting better friends in your life. 🫂

    • VILenin [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      4 months ago

      Germans are objectively the worst because they can’t shut up about how committing the Holocaust made them enlightened and special

      • AlicePraxis [any]@hexbear.net
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        4 months ago

        “we’re actually less racist than anyone else because we got all of that racism out of our system by killing 12 million minorities” - germany-cool

      • glans [it/its]@hexbear.net
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        4 months ago

        I’d like to introduce Poland in contention for being the worst.

        In Poland it’s a jailable offense to say Poland participated in the holocaust in any way. They loved it more than the Germans.

  • DayOfDoom [any, any]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    As soon as he starts doing empty rhetorical shit like “people are gonna say stuff you don’t like” you know they’re a manipulative asshole.

  • atturaya
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    4 months ago

    I would guess 99% of Americans have no idea who the Romani even are, you found a very rare kind of guy

  • itappearsthat [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    Sorry dude that fuckin sucks. I don’t know whether it’s just because I’m older or better at sussing stuff out but it’s really hard to meet new people that aren’t fucking racist. Hell half the friends I had from my 20s developed racist and/or transphobic beliefs.

    • Truffle@lemmy.ml
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      4 months ago

      This happened to me too. Met up with a friend from college days (20+ years) for lunch the other day. We were really close while studying, spent holidays together, etc. Then life happened and while messaging each other from time to time, we had not had the chance to meet up again. Midway through our meal, he started telling me he was suspended that same week from his job (teacher at a preppy college) for calling a student by their dead name on multiple ocassions. I told him that yeah, that is rude, cruel and uncalled for and he should get a lawyer because what he did is fucked up… he then started rambling about forced inclusion and men’s rights and chromosomes blah blah.

      It broke my heart in a way because we were such good friends but now he is just too far gone for me to be able to have a relationship with him.

  • viva_la_juche [they/them, any]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    Had pretty much this exact experience with a friend of mine. Only I had some clients that were Roma who were wonderful people. A little extra but very nice and always brought me food and stuff and when I would bring that up she would just be like “ok well they’re nice but that’s not how most of them are!”

    • blakeus12 [he/him]@hexbear.netOP
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      4 months ago

      ugghghg it was literally this. i asked him how he could possibly claim that they were ALL “bums” and he kept justifying it

  • AlicePraxis [any]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    embarrassed to admit that I was close friends with a guy for many years who would say shit like this since we were teenagers. american who visited his family in europe once or twice as a kid and came back racist against romani people. and frankly had a lot of other bigoted and generally misanthropic views, which I would regularly call out and push back on, which became incredibly exhausting. fuck, I wish I could have found more friends who were cool and chill instead of this racist reddit gamer debatelord dipshit

  • glans [it/its]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    I’ve gotten this exact speech a couple of times.

    If I only knew what they were really like I would understand why they are so widely reviled.

  • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    “If you said that about a black person you’d be a social pariah” usually works for me but I don’t know if it’s different over there in america. Pointing out that what they’re saying is literally identical to anti-black racism is usually a shock to the system but tends to sink in at least a little bit.